4.2.4. Installing Packages

You can install a package and all of its non-installed dependencies by entering:

yum install package_name

You can install multiple packages simultaneously by appending their names as arguments:

yum install package_name [more_names]

If you are installing packages on a multilib system, such as an AMD64 or Intel 64 machine, you can specify the architecture of the package (as long as it is available in an enabled repository) by appending .arch to the package name. For example, to install the sqlite2 package for i686, type:

~]# yum install sqlite2.i686

You can use glob expressions to quickly install multiple similarly-named packages:

~]# yum install audacious-plugins-\*

In addition to package names and glob expressions, you can also provide file names to yum install. If you know the name of the binary you want to install, but not its package name, you can give yum install the path name:

~]# yum install /usr/sbin/named

yum then searches through its package lists, finds the package which provides /usr/sbin/named, if any, and prompts you as to whether you want to install it.

Finding which package owns a file

If you know you want to install the package that contains the named binary, but you do not know in which bin or sbin directory is the file installed, use the yum provides command with a glob expression:

yum provides "*/file_name" is a common and useful trick to find the packages that contain file_name.

Installing a Package Group

A package group is similar to a package: it is not useful by itself, but installing one pulls a group of dependent packages that serve a common purpose. A package group has a name and a groupid. The yum grouplist -v command lists the names of all package groups, and, next to each of them, their groupid in parentheses. The groupid is always the term in the last pair of parentheses, such as kde-desktop in the following example: